Technical Field
The subject matter disclosed herein generally relates to providing configuration and/or other types of updates to industrial assets.
Brief Description of the Related Art
In industrial operations, industrial machines and systems (assets) are monitored to ensure proper operation and/or detect anomalies which may arise. Sensors are typically used by or with these machines and systems to obtain measurements (e.g., temperature, pressure, flow, electrical current, or electrical voltage measurements to mention a few examples). The assets typically include software to perform various tasks. Configuration information is also utilized by these assets.
System integrators and complex system owners must deploy and maintain industrial control systems for their industrial assets. Control systems typically include control code, diagnostics code, and operating parameters. These assets may be controlled on a one-by-one basis in which individual assets are configured or managed separately from other assets.
A variety of approaches have been used to manage and update the software configuration and software used by industrial assets, including the use of manually updating the industrial assets using physical connections and/or components. In order to apply updates or upgrades to these control systems, an operator must typically approve the update and certain conditions must be met. Manually monitoring of conditions may be expensive, time intensive, and error prone.
Additionally, control code and diagnostics code oftentimes remains the same throughout the life of the industrial asset. In the event of a necessary update to an operating parameter of the industrial asset, the asset must be taken offline and the update must be provided to the asset. However, because the controls are coupled together, updates to parametric values and operation of the industrial asset oftentimes requires the transmittal of the unmodified control and diagnostics code in addition to the modified parametric value. These data packages may be large and thus require significant bandwidth and transmittal time.
The above-mentioned problems have resulted in some user dissatisfaction with previous approaches.